


i'll stop the world and melt with you

by xxPayne



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Upside Down, Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Coming of Age, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Friendship, M/M, Summer Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 14:23:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14137875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxPayne/pseuds/xxPayne
Summary: "This summer’s gonna last forever. Even when we start school, and when it snows, and everything—this summer’ll last forever. You said this camp is magic, but it’s not. We are. I think—in any universe, at any time, I think we’re all together. Because I can’t believe I lived so long without knowing you guys, and I never want that to end."The Party never truly met until they all became aHawkins' Happy Camper.





	i'll stop the world and melt with you

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so excited for season 3 to be set in the summer! This fic is completely au, meaning: no mind powers, no Hawkins Lab, no upside down, nothing. And it's set in the summer after the kids' freshman year.  
> I hope you like this! :)

The summer of ‘86 is sweltering.

There have been hot summers in Hawkins, but none like this. This is the kind of heat that leaves the streets deserted, everyone holed up inside with fans blasting and ice packs pressed to their cheeks. This is the kind of heat that makes the tar on the road melt, sticking to the tires of anyone brave enough to get into their cars. This is the kind of heat that makes even ice cream cones feel too hot.

This is the kind of heat that definitely,  _ definitely _ prevents kids from attending summer camp. And yet…

+

“You’re going.”

“But Mom—”

“You’re  _ going,  _ Michael. I already paid for it and it’s nonrefundable.”

Mike searches for words, but it’s useless. When Karen Wheeler decides something, it’s final. He looks at his dad, momentarily hoping that he’ll get him out of this. But his dad has fallen asleep right there in the dining room, slumped over onto the table. Mike rolls his eyes.

“Nancy will be there with you,” Karen says placatingly. “And it says in the brochure that some of the buildings have air conditioning!”

“Nancy will be at the lake all day,” Mike crosses his arms. “With  _ Steve _ .”

“That’s her job,” Karen says, her voice amused. “They’re lifeguards, Michael.”

Mike glances out the window and he swears he can  _ see _ the heat radiating off the sidewalk. It’s still early, yet, and the heat hasn’t creeped inside too much. Within hours, though, it’ll be so hot that Mike will escape to the basement and lie half-naked on the cold concrete until his mom calls him up for dinner. He planned on doing this all summer long, until his mom dropped the bomb on him that he’s going to summer camp, effective tomorrow.  _ Summer camp _ .

His mom says it’s because she feels guilty over never giving him the summer camp experience when he was younger, like she did for Nancy, but Mike suspects that really it’s because his mom wants the whole summer to herself. Even little Holly is going to her own camp for preschoolers.

“It’ll be good for you,” Karen says offhandedly as she stands up and heads towards the kitchen. “You could use some new friends anyway.”

Mike can’t argue with that one. Troy and James used to be fun when they were kids, but then they grew  _ one _ chest hair and suddenly started calling Mike (and everyone else without a chest hair) a queer. He’s been meaning to meet new people, but it’s so much easier to lose track of time watching TV and playing with action figures alone. 

“You should start packing,” Karen calls from behind the wall. “The bus will be here tomorrow at five.”

“Five in the afternoon, right?” Mike asks, bracing himself.

Karen laughs like he’s just told a joke. “Go pack, Michael.”

+

“Okay, you’ve got your toothbrush, shampoo, soap, swim trunks, ten pairs of underwear—please, Will,  _ please _ wash them regularly—three t-shirts, two shorts, blank paper, colored pencils, a sharpener, oh, socks!”

Joyce dashes off to Will’s bedroom, digging through his drawers until her arms are full of socks. She shoves them in Will’s backpack, which is positively bursting. “Postcards and envelopes, hiking boots, a  _ lot _ of ice packs, some—”

“Mom,” Jonathan interrupts, raising his eyebrows. “Breathe.”

Joyce huffs. “I know. I know. I’ll just miss you, baby.”

Will blushes. “It’s only a month,” he says quietly.

“I  _ know _ ,” Joyce says. “A month is a long time without my boy.”

“Jonathan will be home,” Will points out. “And I’ll write you!”

Joyce’s eyes water, but she wipes them hastily. “I know. Oh god, the bus’ll be here in a second. Stay safe, honey, remember that poison ivy has—”

“Three clusters of leaves, I know,” Will grins. He hauls his enormous, overstuffed backpack over his shoulders and wraps his arms around his mom. “I love you.”

She clings to him tightly, kissing his forehead. There’s a honk from outside, which only makes Joyce hold him longer. “Mom,” he complains with a small smile. “I have to go.”

She nods, squeezing him one last time and then stepping back. She watches him hug Jonathan, too, and then head for the door.

“Hey, remember what we talked about!” Jonathan calls.

Will laughs. “It wouldn’t kill me to make some friends, I know.”

+

The first thing Max hears after stepping onto the Hawkins’ Happy Campers bus is an amazed whispering of, “Holy shit.”

Max decides immediately that that’s who she wants to sit next to. She searches them out, scanning the rows until she sees two boys staring at her with huge eyes. One of them has curly hair, matted with sweat under a baseball cap. The other one is shushing him.

“Is this seat taken?” she asks them.

The one in the baseball cap shakes his head wildly, so wildly in fact, that his hat goes flying. “ _ Je _ sus,” the other boy groans when he gets hit in the face with it. “No, it’s not taken. But he smells, so be careful.”

Max shoots him a crooked grin. “I guess I’ll have to sit next to you, then.”

The boy raises his eyebrows, clearly flustered. “Oh, yeah, I’ll just—Yeah. Dustin, move over.”

Dustin grumbles at him, but scoots over to the middle seat anyway, so Max can nab the window seat next to the other boy. “Um, I’m Lucas,” he says when she settles in.

“Max,” she says. “What was the  _ holy shit _ for?”

“Oh,” Lucas makes a face. “You heard that?”

Max laughs.

“You’re wearing a  _ jacket _ ,” Dustin says loudly. “And  _ jeans _ .”

Max looks down at herself and shrugs. “Yeah, so what?”

“It is  _ eighty-seven _ degrees,” Dustin emphasizes.

“Grow up near Death Valley and eighty-seven starts to feel like winter,” she winks. 

“Death Valley, in  _ California _ ?” Dustin asks. She gets the idea that Dustin is always putting emphasis on something.

“Nah, Death Valley in Alaska,” Max says, and then is delighted when Dustin flips her off. She feels like she’s known these two for years already.

The bus lurches forward, the engine making an awful sound. They drive through the rich neighborhoods of Hawkins, making a few stops. They reach a Colonial-style house where a mother is already standing at the mailbox with her son and daughter. There are no tearful goodbyes, or last-minute fretting. The girl kisses her mom’s cheek and takes a seat next to the bus driver, where all the counselors get to sit. The boy simply waves at his mom and steps onto the bus, hiking his bag up higher. He searches the bus quickly, briefly making eye contact with Max before stomping to the end of the bus and claiming the very back corner.

Dustin and Lucas start arguing over whether X-Men or Wolverine is better, and Max is content to listen. When the bickering dies down, she asks, “How long have you been friends?”

“Oh, we just met,” Lucas says.

“Yeah, sure,” Max laughs.

“No,  _ really, _ ” Dustin says. “We’ve had classes together for years and never talked.”

Max is starting to wonder whether this bus has some sort of magical tendency to bring new friends together. She hopes the spell won’t break at the end of the summer, because, as much as she hates to admit it, she’s excited to spend time with Dustin and Lucas, and whoever else she meets this week.

The bus takes off again, making its rounds through Hawkins. It fills up steadily, every seat being taken except the one in the very back, where the boy with the sister had set his bag and never removed it.

The last house they pull up to isn’t part of any neighborhood; it stands alone in an eerie patch of forest. It looks like what Max’s mom calls “well-loved” when she really means “run-down”. A cute kid with a bowl cut comes running down the stairs after the bus honks once, his mom following him out onto the porch and watching him go.

He’s smiling when he steps onto the bus, but it slowly slips off his face when he takes in the complete lack of seats left.

“Could I, um, sit here?” he asks the boy in the back. To Max’s surprise, the boy doesn’t roll his eyes or complain, he just smiles up at him and says, “Yeah, ‘course.”

_ This bus really is magic _ , Max thinks. 

+

Nancy loved summer camp. The bonfires, the dumb team bonding activities, the songs, the horrible food (but amazing s’mores), the endless days down by the lake, the way that the stars in the night sky seemed to be so close she could touch them.

Summer camp also meant long weeks without her distant father and her mother, who tried her best, but her best was never quite good enough.

Camp will feel different now, Nancy knows. She’s no longer the kid sitting around the campfire, roasting marshmallows and singing “This Land Is Your Land”. She’s the hard-ass lifeguard who has to wrestle floaties out of kids’ hands when they want to attempt to belly flop onto them from the high dive. She’s looking forward to it, really. It’s still camp, even if she’s on the other side of it now.

And Steve being there with her doesn’t hurt.

Nancy and Steve get put on the same hours every day: lake duty from eight am to four pm, and dinner supervising at five. She’s already planned all kinds of things they can do in the hour between the two. Not  _ sex things _ , just—Making out a little. On the beds inside the empty cabin on the far left side of the lake.

Except that on the first day of camp, Nancy realizes that free time isn’t really going to be in her vocabulary for the next few weeks.

There’s always something happening, whether it be a kid trying to eat a sandwich while treading water, or a kid whose arms are stuck inside a floaty, or kids dunking each other underwater for way,  _ way _ too long. Nancy’s whole body is sore from a long day of jumping into the water and yanking kids out of it, that by the time four o’clock hits, all she wants to do is take a nap. Luckily, Steve feels the same. So they end up on the beds in the empty cabins on the left side of the lake anyway, but contrary to Nancy’s plans, they spend the whole hour sleeping.

At dinner, Nancy keeps an eye out for Mike. She sees him sitting alone at the very end of the dinner table, and she almost goes over there to knock some sense into him until she sees a shy, sweet boy approach Mike.  _ Don’t send him away, don’t send him away, _ Nancy prays. She can’t stand Mike’s friends, Troy and James. It’s about time he meets someone new, someone who’ll actually care for Mike.

Mike smiles at the boy and Nancy sags in her chair with relief. “Look at you being a good big sister,” Steve teases, popping a soggy curly fry in his mouth.

“Shut up,” Nancy tucks her grin into her shoulder.

The moment is cut short when Steve stands up to yell, “Hey, kid in the blue shirt! Yeah, you! You  _ will not _ be starting a food fight in  _ my _ cafeteria!”

Nancy’s biceps may hurt like she’s been training for a bodybuilding competition, but she knows it: this summer will be the best one of her life.

+

Lucas has only been to Hawkins’ Happy Campers one other time, and that was only for a week-long fitness boot camp for kids, lead by an ex-marine. His dad was the one that suggested it to him, because he wanted to try out for football his Freshman year. The camp kicked his ass, but Lucas can’t be too mad about it, considering he was the only Freshman to make Varsity. So when his dad suggested he try the month-long summer camp—real, actual summer camp, no drills involved—Lucas figured he should.

After meeting Dustin and Max, Lucas is sure that his dad was right again.

He and Dustin fit together like two puzzle pieces—or, well, not really. Because puzzle pieces don’t fight like a married couple, do they? They’re practically best friends within an hour, is the point. He’s never made a friend this quickly before, not even through the shared agony of boot camp. None of his football friends come close, either.

And Max—Max is something else entirely.

Max is special. Lucas has known her for a day and he already wants to wax poetry about her fire-colored hair and her matching personality. As soon as she stepped onto the bus, Lucas  _ knew _ . He was meant to meet her. He could practically feel Cupid’s arrow hitting him in the chest. She must have felt it too, because she gravitated right towards them. Even before Dustin’s  _ holy shit _ caught her attention. 

See what he means about the poetry? He can’t help it.

Dustin and Lucas have to split up with Max long enough to find their cabins and unpack their stuff. The cabins are lined up all along the East side of the lake, with one long dock connecting them all. The left side is for the girls, the right side, the boys, with the counselor’s cabins separating them in the middle.

“I call top bunk!” Dustin shrieks as soon as he sees the layout of their cabin. There’s a window next to each top bunk, providing sweet relief from the already oppressive heat.

“Dammit,” Lucas says. The bunk beds on the other side of the room have already been claimed, though the owner’s of the bags are gone now. The little name tags the counselor’s created for them are hung on the railings. Dustin triumphantly picks up the one with his name and switches it with Lucas’. The ones on the other side of the room read  _ Mike Wheeler  _ and  _ Will Byers _ . 

“Mike from science class, do you think?” Dustin says.

“I’m not in your science class,” Lucas says. “I don’t know him.”

“Oh, right,” Dustin says. “Well, Mike’s nice, he just always looks annoyed.”

“I think I know Will,” Lucas says. He doesn’t want to admit that he only knows of Will because he’s who the Varsity team makes fun of in the locker rooms. Lucas has never joined in, which has gotten him a few odd stares before. He’s not the kind of person to say that about anyone, he never has. “He seems nice.”

“ _ Sweet _ ,” Dustin says. “This summer’s gonna kick  _ ass _ .”

+

When El sees a brochure for Hawkins’ Happy Campers tacked up to a bulletin-board at the store, she can’t help but stop and read it.

“My son is going there this summer,” the cashier says proudly.

El nods at her politely and says, “Can I have this?”

The cashier nods, already pulling out a new flyer to hang up.

El finds her dad in the alcohol aisle, debating between two kinds of beer. El has never tasted beer before, but she’s pretty sure that they all taste like pee. That’s what they smell like, anyway. Wordlessly, she hands him the brochure. He takes a second to read it, and then laughs. “We live half a mile away from the camp,” he argues. “We go swimming in that lake all the time. For free.”

He knows it’s not quite the same, though. El has a hard enough time making friends, with her quiet bluntness that’s uncommon from a kid her age. Summers are always torture for her—she spends them lazing around the cabin, reading books upon books and waiting for school to start again. She has a few acquaintances, but none that carry over past June. School is ending in a week, and she’s already getting all nervous about what she’ll do to pass the time. It doesn’t help that this summer is shaping up to be the hottest summer El has ever lived through, and they only own one fan. At least at camp, some places have air conditioning, and the lake will only be a few steps away at all times. And she’ll be surrounded by other people who all have the same objective: friendship.

“Please?” El says, pulling the face that always makes him say yes.

“God,  _ fine _ ,” he groans. “Kid, if you don’t make at least one new friend there you’re paying me back.”

She knows he’s joking, but she’ll do her best anyway.

+

Steve likes this Max kid. She’s a real spitfire, always yelling her head off about something. Only because they deserve it, though.

On the first day, she notices an older counselor staring at her in her bathing suit, so she hams it up, stretching out in the sand and flipping her hair and everything. When he’s distracted enough, she grabs her glass of lemonade and dumps it over his head.

On the second day, she has a screaming match with the camp director because he tried to enforce an eight pm curfew for only the girls, while the boys could stay out all night if they wanted. Max won, obviously.

On the third day, she wiggles her way out of mandatory swimming lessons (“I already  _ know _ how to swim better than anyone here!”) by feigning cramps so horribly bad that she needs to see the medic. Steve rolls his eyes, but he can’t help admiring her.

On the fourth day, Steve catches her making out with Lucas Sinclair inside the shed the canoes are stored in.

“Oh, Jesus,” Steve says, shielding his eyes. They’re in their bathing suits too, for Christ’s sake. “You little shits love making me do paperwork, don’t you?”

For the first time, Steve sees a crack in Max’s impenetrable armor. “Don’t do that,” she says fiercely, though her eyes betray her fear. “My stepbrother, he—Just please don’t.”

“We won’t do it again,” Lucas says. “Promise.”

Steve really should write them up. It’s kind of his job, that and saving kids from certain death and making sure they eat their peas at dinner. But he doesn’t want to. God knows he’s done so,  _ so _ much worse. It’s a wonder they even hired him.

“Fine,” he relents. “Next time, use cabin number twenty three, it’s on the left side at the end. But  _ not _ between four and five o’clock. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

Max’s face morphs back into its usual state, a smirk that looks a little more friendly than she probably thinks it does. “Thanks, Steve.”

“That’s Mr. Harrington to you,” he says, like an ass. He panicked. “I needed… An oar. Right. An oar.”

Max hands one to him with a cheeky grin on her face. “Thanks, Steve,” she says again.

“I didn’t do anything!” Steve says. “I was never here.”

+

Dustin ends up at Hawkins’ Happy Campers by accident. His mom thought he’d been signing him up for their science camp, the one that only lasts a week and is mostly focused on catching bugs and identifying wildlife. Dustin had been looking forward to it since last winter, until they got a call asking for confirmation that he’ll still be attending the month long summer camp, not focused on science at all. It was nonrefundable, and money is already tight for his mom, so he promised he’d still go. He hasn’t regretted it yet, considering he’s met two people he thinks he’ll be friends with forever. He’s never felt like that before.

Dustin and Lucas don’t meet Mike and Will until late that first night, when the two of them come stumbling in together, soaking wet and giggly. It’s well past the allowed time for swimming, meaning they’re breaking the rules. Dustin loves them already. Lucas seems a little more wary. He hardly says hello before he’s launching into, “Did you go swimming? Aren’t you afraid you’ll get in trouble?”

Mike—from Dustin’s science class, indeed—laughs. “What are they gonna do, give me detention?”

Will laughs like that’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. “Mike’s not as badass as he wants you to think.”

Mike glares at him, but they both end up dissolving into more giggles anyway.

“Are you guys… Drunk?” Lucas asks.

Mike and Will’s laughter tapers off and they both shake their heads. Will says, “Actually, no. Summer camp is just  _ fun _ , isn’t it?”

Dustin thinks about what Max said at dinner earlier—that this camp must have magical powers to bring them all together. Dustin doesn’t usually believe in magic; he much prefers to figure out the scientifical, factual reasons for the world’s weird events. Just this once, though, he’s willing to thank something otherworldly.

Mike and Will find towels to dry themselves with and then climb into their bunks, whispering to each other about things Dustin and Lucas don’t understand.

“What have you guys been doing all day?” Dustin asks.

“We swam across the lake,” Will says. “I did it faster.”

“No you didn’t!” Mike argues. “It’s not fair, we didn’t have a neutral judge!”

“We had a stopwatch, Mike, that’s as neutral as it gets,” Will laughs.

“Wait, you swam across the  _ entire _ lake?” Dustin says. “Holy shit.”

They start talking about anything and everything, then, not stopping until one of the counselors—probably Steve—bangs a stick on their door and tells them to go to bed.

+

El spends her first few days at Hawkins’ Happy Campers in isolation. She didn’t ride the bus into the camp, considering her house is only a five minute walk away. It’s immediately clear to her that by the time camp officially starts, everyone has already made friends and, once again, she’s been left behind.

She spends hours at the lake, lying on her back and floating in the water. She has to stop doing that eventually, because the front half of her body gets a dark tan, while the back stays pasty white. She likes to stand near the shore, digging her toes in the wet sand and algae. It’s soft. Sometimes, if she stays really still, a curious fish will swim circles around her. She misses her dad, but she made him promise that he wouldn’t come check up on her. She wanted to really be like everyone else, for once in her life.

The only person she talks to is the lifeguard, Nancy. Nancy is nice, and pretty, and she treats El like she’s normal.

The first time Nancy talks to her, it’s because El is trying to see how long she can hold her breath—an absurdly long time, apparently, because before she knows it, Nancy is jumping into the water and hauling her up to the surface. El takes a deep breath and looks at Nancy inquisitively.

“Oh, I—I thought you were drowning,” Nancy says, wading back towards the shore. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” El says.

Since then, Nancy would come over and talk to her whenever she could catch a break, which El thinks is especially cool considering Nancy’s boyfriend is  _ right there _ , and she still chooses El instead. It might be because Nancy feels bad for her, but El doesn’t like to think about it like that. Nancy is only three years older than El anyway, so it’s not like she thinks El is some  _ kid _ .

They’re a week into camp when a huge thunderstorm hits. The counselors have been talking about it for days now—they’re the only ones with access to a TV, so they have to relay the news to everyone else. The skies fall dark just after lunch, the clouds looming over their heads. Canoeing and swimming lessons are cancelled for the rest of the day, leaving El to grumpily wander around the camp.

The day drags on and on without Nancy there to kill time with. She supposes that Nancy and Steve are taking advantage of their extensive free time; they’re probably holed up in that abandoned cabin El has seen them run off to before. El explores the arts and crafts cabin, which is mainly geared towards kids much younger than she is. She checks out the music cabin, but the sounds of ten year olds scraping bows against violins for the very first time is too obnoxious for El to handle. She walks along the edge of the camp, trekking through the woods she’s grown up in her whole life. She allows herself a second to regret coming to camp, and then she sees a distant light through the trees—her dad, in their house. She imagines him making that heavy sighing noise of his, saying, “ _ Kid _ …” and she knows she can’t give up just yet.

With renewed determination, she heads towards the center of camp. She plans to say hello to the first person she sees, no matter how scary they might look.

As it turns out, everyone has already closed themselves in their own cabins for the rest of the day. The only person she sees is a janitor wheeling his cart out of the cafeteria, and the camp director sorting mail in the main office. El sighs and sits down on a log near the mostly-dead campfire. She’s not ready to go back to her cabin yet—there are spiders in there, and her three roommates haven’t spoken a single word to her beyond the obligatory hello’s on the first day. The three of them were already friends, and they weren’t looking to add anyone new to their group.

El rests her chin on her hands, watching the still-smoking ash intently. So intently that she doesn’t even notice the person sitting down next to her until she asks her, “Are you okay?”

El jumps, turning to face the girl. She has shockingly red hair, all tied up in a messy ponytail but for a few strands framing her face. She looks concerned, and that makes El feel warm inside. “I’m okay,” she says, but doesn’t offer any further comment. Remembering the promise she made to herself, she adds, “Um. Hello.”

“Hello,” the girl says back, smiling widely. She sticks her hand out for a handshake, which El finds particularly cool. “I’m Max.”

“I’m El,” she replies. They both look at the fire again.

Max says, “We should start this fire, don’t you think?”

El feels a smile envelop her face even as she says, “We don’t have a counselor here, the director wouldn’t let us.”

Max grins coyly. “Oh, me and Mr. Brenner are tight, he’ll let me.”

She disappears into the main office for a moment and comes back looking triumphant, carrying a box of matches. “How did you do that?” El asks in awe.

Max winks. “I told you, we’re tight.”

El looks at the director through the window and then back at Max. She can’t tell if Max is being sarcastic or not.

“Okay, not really  _ tight _ , but we had an argument about something and now he respects me. Also, I told him he shouldn’t make you mad because you’re the Police Chief’s daughter.”

El scrunches her eyebrows together. “How did you know that?”

“My friends told me,” Max says. She looks sympathetic, then, toying around with the matches. “They’re sorta scared of you. Not of  _ you _ , but of him.”

It isn’t the first time people act weird around her because they’re afraid she’ll run to her dad and tell them everything they’ve done wrong. She knows her dad can be intimidating, but he doesn’t go out looking for trouble or anything. If he can avoid giving someone a record, he will. But it’s not like she can tell people that, or they wouldn’t respect him as much.

“But you’re not?” El asks. “Scared of me?”

Max winks again. “I’m not scared of anything.”

+

Dustin is pretty sure he just saw Mike and Will kiss.

He’s, like, ninety nine point nine percent sure. There’s always room for error, of course. Maybe Will had food on his face and Mike… leaned in and licked it off him. Maybe they were playing gay chicken and neither of them wanted to lose. Maybe Mike tripped and fell… right onto Will’s lips. These things happen, Dustin thinks.

“Dude, did they just—” Lucas whispers.

“Uh huh,” Dustin nods, his eyes wide.

The curtains over the window facing the dock have been left open, blowing in the wild breeze. The storm that’s about to roll in has confined everyone to their cabins, but technically the director never said they couldn’t go out onto the dock. That’s where Mike and Will were when the kiss happened; and Dustin and Lucas had a front row seat.

“Wow,” Lucas says, raising his eyebrows.

“Yeah,” Dustin says.

The promised rain has made the air chilly. It’s a relief after so many days of torturous heat. They watch Will rub his bare arms, and Mike say, “This is where I’d give you my jacket, but I don’t have one.”

Will laughs and shakes his head. “It’s okay.”

“Um,” Mike says, looking at the water and not at Will. “I liked that.”

Lucas and Dustin share a look, puffing their cheeks out to keep from laughing. They gravitate closer to the window, straining to hear them talking.

“Me too,” Will replies.

“Maybe… Maybe we can go on a date or something? When camp is over?”

Will sounds breathless when he says, “Yeah, that would be—Yeah. Yes.”

Mike turns his head to smile at Will, but catches Dustin’s eye through the window. He straightens up, nudging Will. “Uh,” Mike says. “Did you see…”

“Yup,” Dustin and Lucas say in unison. Dustin leans on the window frame and says, “Congrats, guys.”

“Yeah, good for you.” Lucas agrees.

Mike and Will’s cheeks stay pink for a while after that—and Dustin and Lucas’ teasing all day certainly doesn’t help. It’s all lighthearted, though. Mike and Will know that they don’t mind.

When the first crack of thunder begins, and Will jumps with fright, Mike takes his mattress off the top bunk and throws it on the floor next to Will’s bunk. He sets his blankets up, propping his pillow against the bed frame.

“What are you doing?” Will asks.

“You’re scared of thunderstorms,” Mike says. “I’m sleeping with you.”

Though the only light in the room is a dim lantern in the corner, Dustin still makes out the blush on Will’s cheeks, and he still catches the way Mike’s hand intertwines with Will’s over the edge of Will’s bed.

“Oh my God,” Dustin says dramatically. “I’m the fifth wheel now.”

+

“You have a shadow,” Steve says one day.

Nancy knows who he’s talking about, but she looks around anyway. El is standing in the water again, shyly wading towards Nancy.

“Hey, El,” she says.

“Hi,” El gives her a small smile. “Do you… Have time to talk?”

“Of course,” Nancy says. She shoots Steve a look that says  _ go somewhere else _ and then spreads a towel onto the sand, laying down. El sits criss cross, half in the water and half on shore. “What’s up?”

“I think I made a friend.”

“That’s awesome!” Nancy says. “Why don’t you look happy?”

“It’s  _ stressful _ ,” El sighs. “She wants me to meet her other friends, but there are so many of them. I don’t want them to think I’m weird.”

“Come on, you aren’t weird,” Nancy says.

El draws a flower in the sand. “I think your brother is one of her friends.”

“Oh. Really? Is it Max?”

In the past week, Mike has been sitting with not one friend, not two, but  _ four _ new friends in the cafeteria. She couldn’t be prouder, especially considering she didn’t have to help him even a little bit. He seems really close with the boy she first saw him sit with—she’s caught them sneaking out of lake time and into the woods, doing God knows what. The girl that sits with them is named Max, and she knows all about how Steve saw her making out with Lucas in the canoe shed. Nancy never thought she’d be this involved in kids’ drama, but she can’t say she minds too much.

“Yes,” El nods. “I like Max. And your brother seems nice, but…”

“It’s scary to talk to new people, I get it,” Nancy says. “But trust me, my brother is the biggest dork of them all. I don’t know his new friends that well, but I haven’t had to get them in trouble for anything, so they must be alright.”

“Okay,” El says, looking pensive. “I will talk to them.”

“Good,” Nancy smiles. In the corner of her eye, she sees a canoe tip upside down and groans. “Sorry, hold on—Steve! Canoe!”

Steve, busy pulling apart two boys who were playing chicken a little too aggressively, yells back, “You do it!”

Nancy groans again and starts running into the water. Her thighs are killing her, and her arms haven’t stopped aching since the first day, but it’s sort of worth it knowing that working here has made an impact on someone. By that, she means El, not anyone she’s heroically pulled out of the water. All she gets for that is kids spitting water in her face because they “weren’t done playing yet”.

It’s a thankless job, but someone’s gotta do it.

+

El is a sweet, quiet girl. She’s sort of the antithesis of Max, and maybe that’s what draws Max to her in the first place. Max is sure that if El needed to, she could kick some serious ass, but any other time, she wouldn’t hurt a fly. Max could stand to learn something from El’s silent fierceness.

She knows that El was nervous to meet the boys, but truly, the boys were more nervous to meet  _ her _ . Mike was convinced that El would know just by looking at him that he’d tried weed once (just the once) and that she’d get him arrested. But just like Max predicted, everyone got along like a house on fire once they gave each other a chance. As a bonus, El is the only person in the entire camp that laughs when Dustin does that  _ purr _ thing with his teeth.

They’re more than halfway through the summer already and Max can’t believe the time has passed by so quickly. She’s never been surrounded by so many people who she loves and who love her back before. She knows they’ll all be going to the same school in the fall, but she can only hope that the magic will stay alive even when they’re far away from camp.

“What’re you thinking thinking about?” Lucas asks her. They’re all sitting in a circle in the boys’ cabin—technically not allowed, but no one needs to know about it—playing old maid.

“Nothing,” Max says. “Just—this. I don’t know. This is just the best summer ever.”

“Yeah,” Will says, sharing a cheesy smile with Mike. Max rolls her eyes, though she’s sure she and Lucas do gross shit like that all the time. 

“We’ll still be friends when this is all over, right?” Max says, almost in disbelief after the words come out. She hadn’t meant to say that.

“Duh!” Dustin cries. Various murmurs of assent sound through the room.

Max grins into her stack of cards. “Oh, by the way, I just fucking lost,” she says, slapping down her last matching pair and the leftover Queen of Clubs.

She basks in the sounds of her friends making fun of her, and hopes more than anything that they mean it when they say they’ll stick together.

+

The last week of camp brings the  _ hottest _ weather of the entire summer. It’s too hot and humid to even spend the day in the lake, because the lake has gotten steadily warmer and now provides no relief at all.

To Lucas’ delight, even Max is sweating. It makes her face all shiny and as red as her hair. When he teases her for it, she only gets redder.

Mostly, though, everyone is too miserable to joke around. They all lay on the cold cafeteria tile until the counselors yell at them about germs and bugs and they have to get up. They drink countless lemonades, and utilize the ice packs Will’s mom packed him, and they avoid anything that requires any physical activity at all, but they still feel like they’re in Hell.

Max seems particularly sad about it all. She keeps complaining about how their last week together is being ruined by the sun. Lucas keeps telling her that it’s not their last week together, because they all live in a ten mile radius of each other, but she ignores him. He understands why she’s worried, especially since her whole life in California was uprooted just last month, but he isn’t even a little bit scared that this will all end. Friendships like these don’t end after a month. These are the kinds of friends he can see himself graduating with, and being in their weddings, and talking about the “good old days” while they sit in their rocking chairs. He can see their futures so clear in his mind that they almost feel like a memory.

They talk about getting older, and where they’ll live, while they press their cheeks to the tiles (only minutes after Nancy told them to get off the floor).

El says she’s never thought about her dream home before, but a place near the woods with a lot of flowers around sounds perfect.

Dustin says he wants to live on Mars, because obviously by the time he’s an adult they’ll have colonized it.

Max says that she misses her old house, but not as much as she thought she would. Hawkins feels more like home than California ever did.

Lucas says his parents have already promised they’ll give him the house when they’re too old to take care of themselves anymore. His parents have always over-prepared for everything.

Mike wants a house that’s not part of a cul-de-sac, and Will says he’ll be happy with anything as long as it’s with someone he loves. That makes them both stare at each other intensely until Max says, “Oh, quit it. You can make out later.”

When Nancy comes back again—this time not to yell at them, but to join them on the cool floor—she says, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” and then when they ask her where she wants to live, she says, “Hmm. I don’t know, actually. Anywhere but a cul-de-sac, I think.”

“That’s what Mike said!” El says.

“Does anyone except suburban moms like cul-de-sacs, though?” Nancy laughs.

Steve finds them a while later, sweating and complaining. “This is where you’ve been all day?” he asks Nancy, collapsing on the ground near her.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” she says, laughing. “And disgusting. But nice. Hey, what’s your dream house like?”

Steve doesn’t think about it for long before he says, “Oh, definitely an underwater house inside the ocean. All the walls are glass and you need a submarine to get back up to the surface.”

Dustin shoots up, holding his hand out for a resounding high five. “That was my second choice, man.”

Lucas sees Max laugh, and then her smile droops again. “Hey,” he whispers. “Can we go outside for a minute?”

“Hell no,” she says. “Do you  _ know _ how hot it is?”

“Fine, I’ll say it here, then,” Lucas huffs. He’s attracted everyone’s attention now, because of course he has. “This summer’s gonna last forever. Even when we start school, and when it snows, and everything—this summer’ll last forever. You said this camp is magic, but it’s not.  _ We _ are. I think—in any universe, at any time, I think we’re all together. Because I can’t believe I lived so long without knowing you guys, and I never want that to end.”

Max’s eyes are wet, and her face gets redder and redder, until she punches Lucas’ shoulder and says, “Oh my God, you asshole, I’m crying now.”

Despite the ungodly heat, they all pile on each other for sticky, sweaty hugs. Lucas catches Max’s eye over Mike’s head and she mouths, “ _ Thank you _ .” He just winks.

+

Steve didn’t think he’d actually get attached to these little shits. The good ones anyway, not the ones like Timothy who always,  _ always _ want to push the limits and see how much they can get away with before he starts yelling. The ones he likes, he  _ really _ likes. He feels like their older brother or something, a position he’d always wanted to hold and never got the chance to until now.

Watching them all board the bus that’ll take them back home makes Steve feel so emotional that he almost wants to punch something. The summer went by faster than he ever thought it could have. He can’t believe he only took this job to spend time with his girlfriend—it seems so long ago, and yet at the same time it feels like yesterday.

Nancy slips her hand into his and they watch Mike put his arm around Will’s shoulder, guiding him towards the back of the bus. Only, they aren’t sitting alone like they were on the first day. El (who convinced the bus driver to drive her to her house, no matter how close it is) and Max and Dustin and Lucas all cram themselves into the row, their backpacks all on their laps, packed so full of stuff that they can hardly see over them. Steve wishes he had a camera to take a picture of them.

The bus driver climbs in last, starting the engine up and backing out of the driveway after one last roll call.

Steve and Nancy watch them go, until the yellow monstrosity disappears from view.

“Hey, we don’t have to leave just yet,” Nancy says.

Steve raises his eyebrows. “Oh yeah?”

“Race you to the lake!” she calls behind her shoulder, already dashing off.

“Cheater!” he screams, nearly tripping over a log in his haste to follow behind her.

+

The bus drives in reverse order, meaning Will is the second person to be dropped off, only after El. He’s already prepared himself, but it’s still a bittersweet feeling when he sees his house approaching through the trees. He discreetly clutches Mike’s hand, and feels him squeeze it when the bus rolls to a stop.

“I’ll see you soon,” Mike says, pulling his backpack up to hide their faces so he can lean in and kiss Will’s cheek. Will turns flaming red, but he doesn’t stop him.

When he pulls away, Will sees his mom throwing open the front door and stopping just short of running onto the bus. “I should go,” he laughs. He picks up his giant backpack and struggles to throw it over his shoulder. “Hey, um. This was the best summer ever, you guys.”

“It’s not over yet!” Max laughs. “We’re literally seeing each other tonight.”

Will smiles at them one last time and then steps off the bus. His mom looks on the verge of tears already. He crashes into her arms, tucking his smile into her shoulder.

“Did you have a good time, baby?” she asks.

“Yeah, Mom. The best time.”

+

“Mom! I’m home!”

Karen comes out from the living room holding a folded up magazine and a glass of wine. She sets them down and gestures at the dining table. “I made lunch! Tell me how it went, tell me everything. Did you have fun?”

Mike usually hates admitting that she’s right, but he thinks he can let it slide just this once. “Yeah, Mom. I—I had a really good summer.”

She smiles. “I knew you would.”

Mike takes a bite of the sandwich, and says, with his mouth full, “By the way… My new friends are coming over tonight to sleep over. There’s five of them.”

“Michael!” Karen’s mouth drops open. “I can’t plan a dinner for this many people on an hour’s notice!”

+

“So how’d it go, kiddo? You make any friends?” Hopper asks.

El shakes her head and watches his face fall momentarily, before she smiles mischievously.

“Not friends,” she says. “Family.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! Comments are so highly appreciated, if you have time to leave one <3  
> [[my stranger things blog!]](http://www.scottsclarke.tumblr.com)


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